Chapter Nine Noelle
I jolt awake, my teeth chattering in rhythm with the shiver that courses through my body. My toes are numb, my fingers are almost there, and my entire body has that weird stinging sensation you feel when you get too cold.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I whimper to myself as I sit upright and glare into the darkness around me.
My room, once again, is an icebox. My teeth are quite literally chattering, and my breath is forming into tiny little puffs of mist in front of me with each frustrated exhale.
With nothing to fight off the cold, my room has been turned into an arctic wasteland.
‘What happened to “I fixed the heater in your room”?’ I grumble as I pull my duvet tight around my shoulders like a makeshift cape. But it’s no use – the cold has seeped into my bones. ‘System reset, my ass.’
The quick fix Hoxton promised earlier echoes mockingly in my head as my toes grow numb with each passing second.
I glance to my left where the thermostat sits on the wall.
Its screen is flashing a bright, angry red and I resist the urge to smack it as hard as I can.
No sense actually breaking the damn thing now, is there?
Another shiver racks through me and I let out an unholy groan before burying my face in the duvet. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever been this cold before.
I can’t stay here like this.
The thought hits me like a truck because where else am I supposed to go?
Besides, I know the moment I leave the bed, the cold will creep in fully, settling over me like an oppressive blanket.
But the idea of staying here, shivering and helpless, isn’t much better.
I close my eyes for a moment, taking a shaky breath, and force myself out of bed.
The duvet slides off my shoulders a little, and I wince at the shock of air that hits the few pieces of exposed skin.
My feet feel like they’ve been dipped in ice water as they touch the floor and I scramble towards the door, my mind racing with curses aimed at Hoxton.
He’s the one who assured me the heater was fixed. And yet, here I am, about to go full-on polar bear just to make it through the night. I can just picture him in his nice warm bedroom, sleeping without a care in the world while I freeze to death in here.
Maybe our conversation last night got to him more than I thought, and this is just my punishment for daring to broach the topic of Christmas in his home.
Letting your personal chef freeze to death in your home simply because she asked about your Christmas plans definitely seems like overkill. Though I wouldn’t put it past Hoxton. Or maybe that’s just the brain freeze talking. Because this cold is most definitely affecting my brainpower right now.
I need to get out of this room.
I wrench the door open and peer out into the dark hall. As usual, all the other doors are closed and there’s no light to be seen under Hoxton’s office door whatsoever. Which means that he’s in his room, and I have no idea which one that might be.
Hoxton’s thinly veiled warning to not to go snooping around his home echoes in my mind; I have to admit, I’m intrigued. What is it he’s so desperate to hide? Is he just insanely private or does he have a Fifty Shades-esque sex dungeon hidden behind one of these doors?
My curiosity is officially piqued.
I reach for the door directly opposite mine and step inside, bracing myself for the worst. But instead of blistering cold, I’m met with a strange stillness. The room isn’t freezing, but it’s not like I’m rushing to describe it as warm either. Still, definitely an improvement on my room.
I flick the nearest light switch and my eyes adjust quickly to the dim lighting as I glance around the room.
To my surprise, it’s a home gym, though not one I would’ve ever expected to find in a place like this. The floors are polished wood, gleaming faintly in the low light. Several sleek machines sit along the walls: ellipticals, a treadmill, and some free weights stacked neatly in one corner.
I step further in, my bare feet padding silently against the cool floor, relieved that at least the temperature here isn’t actively trying to kill me.
The gym smells faintly of rubber and wood polish: clean, almost antiseptic, and eerily untouched.
There’s a large mirror on one wall, stretching from floor to ceiling, and in its reflection, I see myself: dishevelled from sleep, braids gathering in a knot at my waist, wrapped in a duvet cape.
I turn toward the far corner of the room where a row of neatly stacked yoga mats rests against the wall. If worse comes to worst, I guess I could hole up in here for the night, stretched out on one of those mats.
Though I really hope it doesn’t get to that.
I glance around, wondering if there’s any hint of Hoxton’s personal touch here.
Maybe a towel draped over one of the machines, a forgotten protein shake bottle…
anything that might tell me he actually uses the place.
But the room seems pristine, almost clinical.
Not a single speck of dust, and certainly no trace of Hoxton’s presence.
Which is ridiculous, because the man can’t look the way he does and not regularly work out. Can he?
I run a hand over the smooth surface of one of the weight machines, a heavy piece of equipment made of polished steel and leather. For a moment, the soft click of metal echoes through the room as I shift it, and I pull my hand back, startled by the sound.
It’s so quiet, so still, that the tiniest noise feels amplified.
A pang of irritation flickers in me. The small, rational part of me knows that this isn’t Hoxton’s fault.
That this is just an unfortunate side-effect of the blizzard still battering us from all angles, but still.
What exactly is Hoxton’s deal? I can’t understand how a guy who owns a house this big – this cold – could have a home gym like this and still let someone freeze to death in their own room.
The air around me seems to grow heavier with the thought of Hoxton, and I feel my frustration bubbling back up.
Maybe it’s the cold that’s making me angry, or maybe I’m just fed up with everything about being trapped in this house.
I don’t know. But I definitely don’t want to sit around in here any longer.
I back out of the home gym, careful not to leave any trace of my snooping, and try the next door to the right.
I knock a few times and then wait, conscious that this might be Hoxton’s bedroom.
When I get no response, I tentatively push open the door and flick on the light.
It’s a bathroom. But it’s not a bathroom I ever would’ve expected to see in Hoxton’s home.
With the massive clawfoot bathtub dominating the centre of the room, I can’t help but feel that this is the kind of bathroom that wouldn’t look out of place in a kitschy country hotel.
The tub is a gleaming white, impossibly inviting, and its curved shaped is more decadent than any tub I’ve seen in my life.
This is the first room I’ve seen that doesn’t have the same hardwood flooring as the rest of the house.
Instead, it’s made of sleek black tiles that contrast sharply with the soft, warm light emanating from the lights dotted around the walls.
There’s even a huge, framed mirror hanging above a marble countertop that’s packed neatly with expensive-looking toiletries.
The only thing that doesn’t quite fit is the stillness of the room; seemingly everything in this house bar his office and kitchen feels untouched.
Almost frozen in time. The towels hanging on the towel rack are too neat, too perfectly folded.
The bottles of shampoo and soap are labelled in elegant fonts, but there’s not a single fingerprint on them.
I think about my own tiny bathroom back home.
There’s just enough room for a small shower and all my toiletries are haphazardly stuffed in a basket on the floor.
There are at least three half-empty shampoo bottles in the basket, along with no less than twelve various cosmetic tubs that are almost certainly out of date by now.
Hoxton might just have a heart attack if he saw the way I lived.
I wonder how else we’re different.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and I cross the room, my bare feet leaving faint impressions on the cool tile floor as I move past the tub. I can’t help myself; this feels like an opportunity too good to waste.
I glance at the shelves above the bathtub, half expecting to find some basic bath products – something utilitarian and manly, something that makes sense for someone who likely has no time for anything as indulgent as a hot soak after a hard day at work. But what I actually find makes me pause.
Bath bombs.
A collection of them.
Rows of neatly organised, colourful bombs in all shapes and sizes lined up in perfect formation.
For the most part, the labels are from Lush, and each one promises something different.
There are lavender bombs to soothe, rose ones to relax, and a whole stack of citrus ones to energise, more than I can even count right now.
My fingers hover over the colourful bombs.
I can’t believe he has so many, and I can’t help but smile a little.
Hoxton, of all people, has a small arsenal of bath bombs in his ridiculously decadent bathroom.
It’s the last thing I expected to find in this sterile house.
But here they are, rows of soothing, fragrant little balls and squares, and even an animal-shaped one or two.
Their brightly coloured wrappings feel almost too cheerful for this kind of surrounding.